Pepe — Mubi.com
It may not be to everyone’s taste but Dominican director Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias’ visual essay that’s nominally about the life of a hippo is an entrancing and provocative meditation on a host of ideas. The winner of the Silver Lion for best director at last year’s Berlin Film Festival is a strange, beautiful attempt to bring the consciousness of an animal to imaginative visual life. For SA viewers, there is the added curiosity of the hippo’s inner monologue being delivered in Afrikaans. Weird but ultimately wonderful.
Severance Season 2 — Apple TV+
Adam Scott, Patricia Arquette, John Turturro, Christopher Walken and the rest of the stellar cast of Ben Stiller’s dystopian vision of modern work return for a second season, which is almost guaranteed to have you questioning everything you think you know. The show’s world is even stranger than it was in its debut, but everything still holds together thanks to the performances and its creators’ clear vision.
Get Millie Black — Showmax
Tamara Lawrance shines as Millie-Jean Black, a former Scotland Yard detective who goes back to Kingston, Jamaica, where she’s tasked with investigating missing persons cases. The mystery at its centre is strong enough, but the characters and the performances ensure that the show holds its own as a refreshing addition to a familiar genre.
The Day of the Jackal — Showmax
Eddie Redmayne stars as the invisible master assassin in this modern update of the classic 1970s best-seller by Frederick Forsyth that’s become a perennial screen favourite. Adapted for television by Top Boy creator Ronan Bennett it’s a slick, quietly intense, globe-trotting political thriller in which the Jackal faces his biggest challenge after he accepts a job that’s too lucrative to refuse, only to find himself at the centre of a lethal political conspiracy.
Public Disorder — Netflix
A slickly executed and morally murky Italian thriller series that examines the challenges faced by members of a police riot squad who, after a confrontation with angry protesters turns violent, are forced to ask difficult questions about the relationship between the law, the people and those tasked with enforcing it. There are echoes of Roman soldiers facing off against angry plebs and, while the show avoids judgment, it manages to make a compelling case for the consideration of the humanity of both those inside the system and those who wish to overthrow it.
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